Page:Frank Packard - Greater Love Hath No Man.djvu/40

 moved along it as though measuring—and then he stood motionless, listening. From the pantry, behind the dining room, came the muffled ringing of the telephone, very low, very indistinct, as though a hand were held over the bells to deaden the sound. Harold Merton was trying to get a connection. Again and again Merton rang, and Varge waited. The seconds were flying by. It had been necessary to destroy the connection to account for Merton's otherwise suspicious tardiness in communicating with the authorities, and he had refrained from telling the other what he had intended to do in the hope of instilling into the nerve-shaken, incoherent man a little confidence on finding a grain of truth in the story he was to tell—that he had tried to get connection and couldn't; and, also, there would be, perhaps even more important, the very evident genuineness of Merton's surprise when some one else should call his attention to the cut wires. But he had told Merton to waste no time. Would the man never—the ringing stopped, a guarded step came down the hall, passed the library door, halted a bare moment by the hall-rack, evidently to secure hat and coat, and then the outer door opened and closed softly—Merton had gone for Mrs. MacLaughlin.

Varge's hands, one at each end of the bar, rose to his chin, his elbows straight out from his body. Then very slowly the elbows closed in and downwards, a sweat bead sprang to his forehead, a panting gasp came from his lips, and slowly, very slowly, his hands crept together.

And now, guided by the sense of touch, Varge inserted one of the thin, flattened, javelin ends of the bar